I bought a used copy of “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” online the other week, and when it arrived I saw that it was annotated. The annotations explain why this book was sold to me for $2.83—the original owner just did not get it. In fact, they didn’t make it past the middle of chapter 6. Or at least that’s when they stopped annotating. I’ve italicized the best humorless side bar reactions to Thompson so we can all feel superior to owner #1, who may or may not have been a grandmother…a very ignorant grandmother.
“The trunk of the car looked like a mobile narcotics lab. We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers…and also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls.”
Not afraid of dying? OD even?
“I could barely hear the radio…slumped over on the far side of the seat, grappling with a tape recorder turned all the way up on “Sympathy for the Devil.”
Who is the artist?
“We’re your friends,” said my attorney. “We’re not like the others.”
WTF
“How long could we maintain? I wondered. How long before one of us starts raving and jabbering at this boy? What will he think then? This same and lonely desert was the last known home of the Manson family. Will he make the grim connection when my attorney starts screaming about bats and huge manta rays coming down on the car? If so—well, we’ll just have to cut his head off and bury him somewhere. Because it goes without saying we can’t turn him loose. He’ll report us at once to some kind of outback nazi law enforcement agency, and they’ll run us down like dogs.”
Could he really think clearly? Lack of humanity or artistic? Disdain for the law.
“You see, about twenty-four hours ago we were sitting in the Polo Lounge of the Beverly Hills Hotel—in the patio section, of course—and we were just sitting there under a palm tree when this uniformed dwarf came up to me with a pink telephone and said, ‘This must be the call you’ve been waiting for all this time, sir.’ ”
Was he all about the shock?
“This blows my weekend, because naturally I’ll have to go with you—and we’ll have to arm ourselves.”
What for? Scared of what?
“You Samoans are all the same.”
Fun jab or really a bigot?
“Jesus, just one hour ago we were sitting over there in that stinking baiginio, stone broke and paralyzed for the weekend, when a call comes through from some total stranger in New York, telling me to go to Las Vegas and expenses be damned—and then he sends me over to some office in Beverly Hills where another total stranger gives me $300 raw cash for no reason at all…I tell you, my man, this is the American Dream in action! We’d be fools not to ride this strange torpedo all the way out to the end.”
Was he not aware of his employers during his stupors?
“Horatio Alger gone mad on drugs in Las Vegas.”
Who is he?
“And you have to remember that a lot of good cops are vicious Catholics. Can you imagine what those bastards would do to us if we got busted all drugged-up and drunk in stolen vestments? Jesus, they’d castrate us.”
Shock the Catholics?
“It made me feel like King Farouk.”
Who is this guy?
“Right. Challenge the bastards on their own turf.”
Was he simply full of it?
“This man has a bad heart—Angina Pectoris. But we have the cure for it. Yes, here they are.” I picked four amyls out of the tin box and handed two of them to my attorney. He immediately cracked one under his nose, and I did likewise.”
Bad health problems and still did heavy drugs?
“ ‘Oh, jesus!’ he moaned. “Did you see what God just did to us?”
No faith/religion?
“We finally got into the suite around dusk, and my attorney was immediately on the phone to room service—ordering four club sandwiches, four shrimp cocktails, a quart of rum and nine fresh grapefruits. ‘Vitamin C,’ he explained. ‘We’ll need all we can get.’ “
What does grapefruit do for drug addicts?
“Tooling along the main drag on a Saturday night in Las Vegas, two good old boys in a fireapple-red convertible…stoned, ripped, twisted…Good People.”
Just had extreme and dangerous bad habits.
